the truth!" "I have just told you. I have never dishonored you."

He looked her full in the face, and how beautiful she was, with her gray
eyes, like the cold sky. In her dark hair dress, on that opaque night of
black hair, there shone the diamond coronet, like a milky way. Then he
suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this grand creature was
not merely a being destined to perpetuate his race, but the strange and
mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been
accumulating in us for centuries, but which have been turned aside from
their primitive and divine object, and which have wandered after a
mystic, imperfectly seen and intangible beauty. There are some women
like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical
attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and
aesthetic charm which surrounds woman, that living statue who brightens
our life, like sensual fevers and immaterial appetites.

Her husband remained standing before her, stupefied at that tardy and
obscure discovery, confusedly hitting on the cause of his former
jealousy, and understanding it all very imperfectly; and at last he
said: "I believe you, for I feel at this moment that you are not lying,
and formerly, I really thought that you were." She put out her hand to
him: "We are friends, then?" He took her hand and kissed it, and
replied: "We are friends. Thank you, Gabrielle."

Then he went out, still looking at her, and surprised that she was still
so beautiful, and feeling a strange emotion arising in him, which was,
perhaps, more formidable than antique and simple love.